Survey Says: Despite Convenience of Online Banking, Service at the Branch is What Wins Over Customers

BOSTON—June 21, 2017—TimeTrade, the leading provider of intelligent customer engagement, today announced the results of a new survey—The State of Banking 2017—which show that banking consumers still like to conduct business at a local branch, but they expect knowledgeable, highly personalized service from bank employees when they visit.

Despite the convenience of online banking, the TimeTrade survey of 2,000 consumers found that nearly half of respondents (48 percent) visited a bank branch once a month or more, with another 26 percent frequenting a branch at least five times in 2016.

Those results are consistent with the finding that branch location and operating hours are the top reasons consumers choose where to do their banking. The quality of the customer service they receive is the next most important factor when choosing a bank.

Banks, in general, do a good job providing customers with a personalized experience. Seventy-one percent of respondents feel they have a personalized experience in the branch, and 51 percent of consumers said they always are served by a knowledgeable representative when they need help with a specific issue.

Ranking the quality of service they receive at their bank on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the best, 33 percent of respondents rated their bank a 5, while another 41 percent gave their institution a 4.

Meeting—or exceeding—customer expectations is critical for banks that want to maximize business at their branches, given the wide range of banking choices available to consumers.

“Like most industries, banking is adapting to the rapidly changing needs of its customers,” said Gary Ambrosino, CEO of TimeTrade. “In 10 years, it’s likely bank branches will be just one of the possible places for face-to-face meetings at key moments of the customer journey. The customer will be in control of deciding when and where they want to meet, and they’ll be able to easily schedule an in-person or virtual appointment. The meeting can be at a bank building, or at a local coffee shop. By 2027 banking will become much more human again—reverting back to personalized, local relationships, like banks used to have with their customers.”

One of the ways banks can ensure that the right people are available to serve customers who want to discuss mortgages, loans, retirement planning and other important matters is to allow them to schedule appointments with subject-matter experts, at a date, time and location of the customers’ choosing.

More than 65 percent of survey respondents said, for example, they would prefer to schedule an appointment with a mortgage specialist instead of going to a branch and waiting for someone to help them. More than half of respondents said they would choose a bank specifically because it offered the ability to schedule appointments at a convenient time and location. And 34 percent said they would be much more likely to visit a branch if they could make an appointment for the time they prefer.

About The State of Banking 2017 The State of Banking 2017 survey of 2,000 consumers was conducted by national survey firm SSI between April 21 and April 25, 2017. The full report is available for download at no cost.

About TimeTrade TimeTrade creates conversations that drive business. The company equips businesses to provide personalized service to every customer, every time, creating a service guarantee that improves customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention, and increases sales growth. TimeTrade’s leading-edge Customer Engagement Cloud, an enterprise platform delivered through a worldwide cloud-hosting network, provides omnichannel and mobile application tools for managing the most critical part of the customer journey: the live conversation. It includes several tightly integrated modules for online appointment scheduling, queue management, and data-rich analytics and reports. The company’s patented cloud technology scales to meet the demands of the largest multinational enterprises as well as mid-size and small businesses, and undergoes independent SOC 2 type 2 security audits annually. More than 500 of the world’s most successful brands—including the largest banks, retailers, sales organizations and healthcare systems—rely on TimeTrade to power their live customer conversations and improve the customer experience, in person, by phone or online.

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